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Theatre Review: As You Like It
There’s little to like in this Shakespearean comedy which, played relentlessly for laughs, ignores its sexual ambiguities
Playing for laughs: Lucy Phelps (Rosalind) and Amelia Donkor (Silvia)
[Topher McGrillis]
STEVE ANDREW recommends a lively and often moving guide to once vibrant spaces that have been abandoned or swept away
GEOFF BOTTOMS appreciates the local touch brought to a production of Dickens’s perennial classic
MARY CONWAY is disappointed by a production whose design and cartoonish acting overwhelms the close scrutiny of characters
SUSAN DARLINGTON enjoys the raucous familiarity of a traditional topsy-turvy pantomime
RON JACOBS introduces the latest novel by the best writer of US working-class fiction writing today
As You Like It
Royal Shakespeare Theatre
Stratford-upon-Avon
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW, no great Shakespeare fan, claimed sardonically that children would enjoy the virtue and philosophy in As You like It while adults would be delighted by the pageantry and wrestling.
Kimberley Sykes’s production, opening the new RSC season, certainly delighted an audience determined to enjoy something in these gloomy Brexit days.
Anchoring the show around the much-quoted line “All the world’s a stage,” she sets the play seemingly backstage with the action resembling a rehearsal session for an upcoming pantomime. The main prop is a costume rack from which the cast members appear to have made their own choices.
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